It’s been his show all night -
the man who can talk as long as you want
on any subject you choose:
Driving. He laughs inappropriately
telling about the woman killed in her car
by a single falling rock.
He makes me think of the blind man
I know who is happily blind,
who is happily going deaf -
a former lifeguard,
finished with the cries of the drowning,
the grateful embraces of those revived
by strange wet lungfulls of his vocation,
conveyed by something more -
and also less – than a kiss.
Driving home I listen to the DJ making jokes
about the sudden death of the comedian
everyone knows he loved,
whose body stayed behind the wheel,
whose head landed on the golf green.
The jokes are obvious.
Sometimes we laugh because we’ve been pulled
from the swirling darkness
by the very fact that we simply feel
something.
And we greet the suddenness of it
like the grip of the lifeguard’s hand,
like a tired hungry swimmer greets the shore:
laughing.